Across the nation

Posted: September 9, 2011 - 11:22pm

WASHINGTON

House and Senate leaders have reached a deal that averts a looming shutdown of federal highway and aviation programs, a key GOP lawmaker said Friday.

The agreement clears the way for passage next week of a single, short-term bill that extends operating authority for the Federal Aviation Administration through the end of January and highway and transit assistance programs through the end of March, Rep. John Mica of Florida, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said in an interview.

Republicans have agreed not to include any spending cuts or contentious policy provisions in the bill, Mica said.

BOSTON

A Massachusetts prosecutor says he’ll continue to pursue a criminal case against President Barack Obama’s uncle, even though federal immigration officials have released him from custody.

Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said Friday he’ll pursue state charges against Onyango Obama stemming from his Aug. 24 arrest on a drunken-driving charge.

Federal immigration officials took Obama into custody shortly after that incident on allegations he violated an order issued nearly two decades ago to return to his native Kenya.

SAN FRANCISCO

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing the Walgreens drugstore chain on behalf of a diabetic clerk in South San Francisco who was fired for taking a bag of chips to stabilize her blood sugar levels.

The commission alleged in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday that Walgreens’ decision to terminate Josefina Hernandez after her nearly 18 years of unblemished service to the company constituted discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

According to the suit, Hernandez was working as a cashier in September 2008 when she felt an attack of hypoglycemia coming on. She grabbed a bag of chips, gobbled them down and paid for them as soon as she could the same day.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.

Officials in eastern South Carolina are moving a school bus stop that was by a strip club after parents complained.

WPDE-TV reports children had to wait in the parking lot of a strip club in Atlantic Beach to catch the school bus.

Misty Umphries, a mother who waits at the stop with her children, says she had to explain to her 4-year-old the meaning of “topless.”

SALT LAKE CITY

A former Mormon bishop and co-founder of a nonprofit group that helps women and children in Third World villages faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced in November for sexually abusing children.

Lon Harvey Kennard, 69, from Heber City, Utah, pleaded guilty this week to three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. Each count involves a different victim, and carries a sentence of five years to life.

The victims were among six children the man and his wife adopted from Ethiopia, where the couple helped establish an orphanage.

HELENA, Mont.

A Montana restaurant listed in the phone book under “Animal Carcass Removal” became the butt of a Jay Leno joke earlier this year, but it’s no laughing matter to the owner now suing the publishing company over the business he’s lost.

Hunter Lacey says in his lawsuit that business at his Bar 3 Bar-B-Q restaurants in Bozeman and nearby Belgrade has dropped off since the Dex Media Inc. listing and that his brand and reputation have gone down the tubes.

The listing first appeared in 2009 in the business pages of Dex’s telephone book under the “Animal Carcass Removal” section. Lacey said he first found out about it when the calls started coming into the restaurants.